New York Times Story on Ballot Access for Presidential Candidates in France

The New York Times of January 31 has this story about the requirement that presidential candidates in France need 500 signatures of mayors or other local officials in order to get on the ballot. France has tens of thousands of places that have their own mayor. However, the requirement is proving difficult to meet ever since the law was changed, to make the petition signatures available to the public. In the past, many small-town mayors have taken the position that they would sign for any presidential candidate, whether they agree with the candidate or not, because they favor inclusive ballot access. But, with the petitions now public, some presidential candidates are having a tougher time gathering the signatures.

The petition is due March 16. Presidential elections in France commonly have between ten and fifteen candidates on the ballot. Thanks to Jerry Kunz for the link.

You have to remember that, to a large extent, the Liberation of France was a disgusting lynching bee:http://ia600504.us.archive.org/6/items/francethetragicy006833mbp/francethetragicy006833mbp.pdf…in the history of France, a bloodier period than that which followed the Liberation of 1944-1945. The massacres of 1944 were no less savage than the massacres of the Jacquerie, of St. Bartholomew, of the Revolutionary Terror, of the Commune; and they were
certainly more numerous and on a wider scale.
(…)Authentic figures about the disorders and massacres of 1944-1945 are impossible to obtain but, in spite of belated official attempts to minimize the number of victims in many cases innocent of any serious offense the evidence points to a total of at least a hundred thousand persons men, women, and even children murdered (I can employ no other term) by individuals, by criminal bands, by irregular tribunals, by self-appointed bodies which proceeded, without trial, to what were euphemistically called “summary executions.”